Blooms and another insight

Some sunshine and blue skies this morning.  And I spotted the first crocus in the garden out front.  So I know  that Spring will arrive eventually.  I love the beautiful golden color of these.  This photo might be a good inspiration for an art quilt....who knows.

 I really like the label I came up with for the circle challenge for the Zen Garden.   I used my greeting card program and found a neat black and white graphic with a tree and cardinal.  Ah....I had no cardinal on the front, so he could go on the back!    But as a regular black and white image, I thought it was too much and overwhelming.  So I played around with the color format and discovered by changing the black to a very light grey the image appeared faded like a watermark.   Kind of like a hidden surprise, I think.

I took a close up photo to show the quilting on Zen Garden.  It is very hard to see because it is black on black, but the ripples and curves between the zentangles is the free motion quilting.  I stitched a curved  line and then followed it back and forth to echo the original line.  I stitched 5 or 6  echo lines and then changed direction and created another curved line to echo.  I worked from the center out to the edge, trying to blend the curves together.  This takes a lot of thread and makes the piece stiffer than a quilt should be, but I love the effect.   

So, I am adding another insight to my list.

What I thought was a lack of inspiration was really just a time out, a delay, a slow down and wait.  The creative process is not a straight line, and I have to look around the next curve sometimes!